Everyone is playing Borderlands 3 ⁠– even without sales on Steam

(Image credit: Gearbox)

Are you playing Borderlands 3 yet? Judging by comments from Gearbox's CEO, Randy Pitchford, over Twitter, it seems like everyone else is.

As reported by GameSpot (opens in new tab), the latest Borderlands title looks to be performing incredibly well on PC, despite only having been on sale for a handful of days - and not having the usual gaming audience over at Steam.

The decision to make Borderlands 3 exclusive on PC to the Epic Games Store certainly ruffled a few feathers - especially the plumage of those used to the Steam marketplace who didn't like feeling strong-armed into using another platform, even one that gave a fairer share of profits to a game's developers.

This hasn't stopped Borderlands 3 from "greatly exceed[ing] expectations", though, with twice the number of concurrent players on its launch day than at any time in Borderlands 2's history.

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Without screenshots of actual data, it's hard to gauge what exactly the number of players is – but if the claims made by the CEO are true it sounds like a strong start for the game, and one that will only increase when Borderlands 3 does come to Steam in April 2020.

The launch of Borderlands 3 has been somewhat overshadowed by various legal allegations around Pitchford (opens in new tab), so the company will no doubt welcome the opportunity to report some positive news about the platform.

That, combined with player anger over Borderlands 3's exclusivity to Epic's games platform, could have been catastrophic for the game's release, but it looks like the desire to play a quality game is winning out over those other considerations.

Henry St Leger

Henry is a freelance technology journalist. Before going freelance, he spent more than three years at TechRadar reporting on TVs, projectors and smart speakers as the website's Home Cinema Editor – and has been interviewed live on both BBC World News and Channel News Asia, discussing the future of transport and 4K resolution televisions respectively. As a graduate of English Literature and persistent theatre enthusiast, he'll usually be found forcing Shakespeare puns into his technology articles, which he thinks is what the Bard would have wanted. Bylines also include Edge, T3, and Little White Lies.